


treason stains your lips

by Cinnamonbookworm



Series: the darhkness inside [1]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: F/M, darhk!felicity au, in which felicity falls in love despite her best attempts, in which felicity has been playing the team the whole time, in which felicity is her father's daughter and ready to take on as heir to the hive, in which nyssa and felicity are frenemies to the throne who lowkey flirt a lot
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-27
Updated: 2015-06-07
Packaged: 2018-04-01 14:40:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4023688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cinnamonbookworm/pseuds/Cinnamonbookworm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>title from the poem london's burning by a.g.: <i>your mouth tastes like november the sixth // treason stains your lips, wine dark and haunting</i></p><p>it's a game she's been playing since she was young, except now she can't quite decipher the difference between real life and the fantasy she's created</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> so yeah, here’s the prologue for my darhk!felicity au… i’m not totally sure where i’m going with this, but it was prompted by this amazing anon in my askbox on tumblr… it will be olicity eventually, but i don’t really mind sticking hints of my other felicity-related ships in here. i hope you guys like this, and send me headcanons for this au please because i am kind of lost

_Once upon a time._

That’s how the story starts. The one he tells her every night as far back as she can remember.

_Once upon a time there was a great king._

Her father whispers to her as he tucks her into the soft pink blankets of her childhood bed.

_But there was a threat to his rule, one that he had to eliminate, and he could not do it as a king, so he packed up his kingly things and went into hiding._

Little Felicity was confused; what threat could be so terrible that a king himself could not get rid of it? She would never understand. But it was okay, because the next part of the story always distracted her.

_And while he was in hiding, he stopped at a well and wished for happiness, because he had not felt it in so long, and there he met a milkmaid with hair the color of corn silk._

“Like mommy?” She would ask and he would always smile and kiss her forehead and brush away the strands of decidedly dark hair from her face.

“Yes. Just like mommy.”

_And so the king decided to stay in the village with the milkmaid and he married her and they had a beautiful little princess. And for a while, they were all happy._

And Felicity would always think the story was over, but it never was, because he would continue on, with something that never really seemed like an ending.

But the king knew one day he would have to go back to being a king and leave this life behind, as soon as it was safe for him to do so.

“Why couldn’t he take his family with him?” She would always ask.

And her father would look at her with sparkling steely blue eyes and smile and not answer her question with anything other than “Someday you’ll understand, sweetheart.”

When he left, just like he’d always said the king would do in the story, Felicity would tell herself that he was coming back, because he said he’d come back, he said he loved them. He said the king would come back and make his daughter a princess.

But he never did.

And she’s getting a little too old to believe in fairytales. She’s getting a little too old to keep pretending that any castles exist other than the ones that are filled with smokers and gamblers. She’s getting a little too old to pretend that she could ever be a princess, or to pretend that her father was anything other than what he was: which was gone.

So she stops pretending.

Felicity finds out Cooper is dead in a cafe just outside of Cambridge. She barely has a few minutes to grieve before someone slides across the booth from her.

“It was supposed to be you.” He says.

She doesn’t ask how he found her; she knew he would eventually. She doesn’t ask what he’s talking about or how he knows what it is she’s just read; he’s always been too good at this kind of thing.

Felicity looks up from her laptop, moves the charcoal hair out of her face, and glares at him through her black-stained tears.

“What?” He asks, looking far-too amused for how she currently feels at the moment. “No hello for your loving father?”

She’s not sure whether or not she is going to throw something at him. Preferably her hot coffee. But she doesn’t want to get anything on her laptop.

“What do you mean it should’ve been me?” She asks him through clenched teeth.

“By that, my dear, I mean he wasn’t supposed to be as loyal as he was, he was supposed to give you up, you were supposed to be arrested and incarcerated.” He sighs wistfully, as if he’s slightly disappointed in her for not getting arrested. “Unfortunately, now my plans to fake your death have been interrupted, so this meeting will have to do.”

“Oh my god.” Felicity groans, sinking into her crossed arms and facing the table. “Of course when you find me again you’d be certifiably insane. Why did I expect anything different? Why else would you be here?”

Her father reaches across the table, closing her laptop and touching her shoulder like he used to do when she was younger. “Well isn’t it obvious?” He asks her. “I’ve come back for you, princess.”

And suddenly the story he used to tell her comes flooding back to her. Even though she’s fairly sure her father is insane, she decides to hear him out, because at least his crazy story will get her mind off of Cooper.

And it is quite a crazy story. He tells her about a place that sounds straight out of a legend because it is where the dead can be brought back to life and a league of assassins has their headquarters. He tells her about a fight and him breaking away from said league with some of their magic zombie liquid and half of their members. He tells her about H.I.V.E., which he says actually stands for the Hierarchy of International Vengeance and Extermination. He tells her about his real job and his position and why he couldn’t stay with her and her mother. He tells her about H.I.V.E.’s resources, and then pulls out a bag of something that smells slightly herb-y to demonstrate.

Her father then pours said bag of herbs into her coffee and stirs it a bit, before telling her to drink.

At this point, she’s more than fairly certain he’s crazy, but his story has so many details to it that it doesn’t really seem made up, and she knows it’s a very bad idea, but, after a quick staring match with him, she takes her coffee cup anyway and chugs the whole thing.

Felicity doesn’t know why she does it, maybe it’s because it feels like a challenge, and she knows she never wants to back down when he challenges her, although she cannot seem to remember any time she has done so before.

And then she does, memories she had long forgotten, or maybe never remembered, crashing over her in waves and it’s so disorienting that she nearly blacks out.

She remembers. And he explains.

* * *

S _he’s four years old when it starts. Her mother is working the shift after school so her father has to pick her up. “I want to take ballet.” She says, because Janice Hardson is taking ballet. He tells her she can take ballet if she really wants to, but he has something a bit more fun planned._

_He takes her to the office she’s come to know as his workplace, but they don’t go through the front entrance, they go through the side, and then he presses a certain code into the elevator and they shoot straight down until her ears pop and then the elevator door pings open to reveal a room full of about ten girls around her age._

_“This is my daughter, Felicity, daughter of Ra’s al Ghul and heir to the demon. I expect her to be able to at least defend herself by the time I come back.”_

_And then he leaves her there, for an hour, as she bloodies her knuckles and gets bruises up and down her arms and learns all the ways she can make the other girls scream._

_When he picks her up, she tells him she wants to do ballet. He hands her a cup of tea that smells vaguely of herbs and tells her to ask him again tomorrow._

_She drinks and forgets._

_It’s at six that she gets her first sword. It’s small and sharp and lightweight and mostly only ceremonial, and she loves it half to death. It’s at six that she first learns how to shoot a gun, and although she forgets during the day, her hands do not, and she remembers instantly as the gas fills the elevator on her way down. It’s at six that she is first presented in front of the rest of H.I.V.E. in a black lace dress and a bow in her dark hair and they all bow before her feet, knowing that she is not as innocent as she appears._

_Her father leaves her mother when she is ten, but he does not leave her. She tells her mother she’s taking ballet. She is not. And while her mind is sharpened during the day as the number of computers in her room rise and she hacks into the Vegas PD for the first time, her body is sharpened into a tool of her father’s design at night, only for her to forget it all._

_She is fifteen when she meets her competition for the first time. A girl in black and red leather only a bit older than her corners her in the street outside, looking her up and down curiously before introducing herself. Felicity has always felt confident when she has full knowledge of who she is, but now, in baggy grey sweatpants and a black tank covered in sweat, she feels slightly inferior next to the other girl. At least, until she opens her mouth._

_“I am Nyssa, daughter of Ra’s al Ghul, heir to the demon.”_

_She’s heard about her, in the stories her father has told her, where he reminded her time and time again that if she were born a boy he could’ve taken over the other half of the League by different means. The girl born of fire and steele who can take down any member of either League yet to cross her._

_“Felicity Smoak. Daughter of Ra’s al Ghul, heir to the demon.” Is her response._

_“I know who you are.” Nyssa confides, with a slight smirk and a thick, gorgeous accent._

_“Then why are you here? What do you want?”_

_“What any rival wants;” is her response, “to see who’s better.”_

_And so they fight, Felicity pulling out her supposed-to-be-only ceremonial sword and clashing against that of the other girl. They dance around each other like wolves and their fight does seem more like choreography than anything else, because it’s obvious neither are there to kill each other, and when she gets a blow in on Nyssa’s lip, causing blood to drip down the already ruby-red lips, the other girl smirks a bit, looking impressed, before she cuts the sleeve on Felicity’s arm._

_She walks away from the fight wondering why she would have to be born a boy to marry the other heir to the demon; she wouldn’t mind it as she is now, not really._

_Her father is less than pleased about the fight, but he tells her she held her own and that’s really all that matters. Any sword covered in her enemy’s blood is a worthy sword indeed, after all._

_When she goes off to college the lessons stop, but not before she is officially branded as one of H.I.V.E,’s own. A small brand, the shape of a honeycomb, is put in the back of her mouth, where no one will see, and a silver necklace of the same shape is bestowed upon her._

_She is told by the doctors, when she wakes up with no memory of the affair, that it was from getting her tonsils removed._

_She knows deep in her gut that that is not true. But no one is there to confirm her suspicions._

* * *

Felicity isn’t quite sure how to take in all the knowledge that she now possesses. Finding out you have been trained since birth to take the title that your father is now lying in front of you is a hard thing to deal with, but she is angry and sad because of Cooper’s death and now feels absolutely powerless. She remembers how she felt when her blade scraped against Nyssa’s face. She wants to feel that powerful again.

“What do you want me to do?”

He tells her she’s too conspicuous. They go through her belongings, her records, her friends, her job, trying to find anything she ever could’ve gotten unintentionally that would connect her to H.I.V.E.

“You have to remain off the radar for a few years.” He tells her with a sad smile. “It would be easier if we had faked your death…”

She reminds him she is not doing that under any circumstances.

It is her idea to change the way she looks. Her classmates remember Smoak, the girl with hair and a soul as dark as her name, and she needs to become someone else, she needs to become something else. Her father tells her what made their Vegas family so inconspicuous, despite Donna’s love for bright colors and 6-inch heels.

“No one takes a blonde in a skirt seriously.”

So she becomes a blonde in a skirt. Throws away her black, dyes her hair the same shade as her mother’s, pulls it up and away from her face - computer programmers really shouldn’t have it falling in their eyes anyways - and masters her speech.

The babbling comes naturally. A habit she had broken young, as part of her H.I.V.E. training, but which now comes back to her as easily as riding a bicycle. He helps her perfect it. Enough superficial, slightly embarrassing information to showcase a sense of trust and make her target not ask any questions, because no one would ever ask if you can break a man’s neck once you’ve gone on a tangent about your favorite type of conditioner.

And so, Felicity Smoak is born.

She rejects the big jobs offered to her, the internships from her professors, and travels across the country, back to California, where bottle-blondes are numerous and prominent, and becomes an IT girl at Queen Consolidated, a job far below her skill level, but an inconspicuous one. One that will keep her off the radar until he needs her. And he will need her. That he can promise.

So far, he hasn’t broken a promise.


	2. eye of the hurricane

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Felicity does what her father asks of her. She waits. For two whole years. Two years after their encounter in the coffee shop, the first challenge harder than figuring out whether or not she can get coffee stains out of a satin blouse comes up.  
> Oliver Queen walks into her office with a laptop full of bulletholes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so this is gonna be mostly necessary set up, so forgive me if it's slightly rushed. chapter title from the song eye of the hurricane by bob dylan {accurate backing track for this chapter}.  
> for reference, i’m switching two scenes in unthinkable here, and the flowers scene with Ted Daniels is from the Arrow Season 1.5 comics

Felicity does what her father asks of her. She waits. For two whole years. Two years after their encounter in the coffee shop, the first challenge harder than figuring out whether or not she can get coffee stains out of a satin blouse comes up.

Oliver Queen walks into her office with a laptop full of bulletholes. And she only panics a little.

And he may say he was always on the island, but she knows A.R.G.U.S. has records of a man who looks like Oliver Queen working for Amanda Waller. And she hopes, god she hopes, that he’s been sent by her father to challenge her, to keep her mind sharp, or perhaps as a wake up call to prepare for her ascendance.

She covers up the panic with her usual babble. And while she may not buy his bullshit, he definitely buys hers. And she may not fall at his feet at first sight, but maybe she puts his jawline to memory because she is allowed to appreciate the finer things in life and the way Oliver Queen looks is one of them.

Unfortunately, the laptop does not contain a secret message from her dad, but instead blueprints of the Exchange Building belonging to Warren Patel - not Floyd Lawton, as it turns out the billionaire had originally thought the laptop belonged to.

She looks him up later, he’s nowhere to be found in either A.R.G.U.S. or H.I.V.E.’s databases. She assumes it must’ve been a one time thing; something weird and obscure that she was never going to see again.

And she moves on, although her mind occasionally wanders back to Oliver Queen and his jawline and his blue eyes and the way he almost smiled when she first babbled at him instead of looking annoyed or bulldozed like most of the people she talks to do. Maybe she made a good first impression.

 

Walter Steele calls her up to his office and the first thing she immediately thinks is that she’s being fired, and she _can’t_ be, because this is the job she’s been in for two years, the stable, normal, mostly-boring job that has kept her hidden and in the position to strike at any time, the job her father picked out for her. So she fights for it, abandoning all pretenses of babble and fluff for stating her case to her boss, consequences be damned.

He barely knows her name though, so that must be a good sign, but he sure as hell is about to, because in her eyes her boss knowing her name is a price worth paying if it means she gets to keep her job.

Mr. Steele tells her she’s not being fired.

Immediately, she covers up the harshness of her tone and the heir-to-the-demon look in her eyes with a ramble and a goofy gesture, hoping he’ll forget about it, forget the way the fire shot up in her eyes as she marched into his office. He seems to.

Apparently, her reputation has preceded her, because a prominent member of the company has heard about one of her side projects, digging into things for people, for the right price of course, and even though it’s something her father never explicitly stated was against the rules, she has a feeling he disapproves, still, she tells Walter she’ll look into it anyway, with a foot-in-mouth seemingly accidental innuendo stuck on the end just in case.

And now, for the first time in a few years, she has an interesting family to watch and observe and occasionally do favors for, and it seems like the most fun she’s had since she agreed to work with her father in that booth.

And she thinks to herself that it probably won’t happen again.

But then Oliver Queen comes back, this time with his bodyguard, and a whole other slew of lame excuses, each of them getting more and more ridiculous as life goes on, from him wanting to catch up with an old friend, to a birthday gift, to a scavenger hunt, and finally, to an obvious vial of something that is definitely not a hangover cure. And Felicity hates to admit it, but she’s more intrigued by him every time he visits, and it feels like a storm is brewing on the edge of everything.

And then Walter goes missing.

And then she gives Oliver the notebook with the names that the vigilante seems to be targeting in it.

And then a shot and bleeding vigilante appears in her Mini Cooper (the one great love of her life left named Cooper) and reveals himself to be Oliver Queen and suddenly all the puzzle pieces she’s been gathering for the past few months reveal themselves into a perfect picture. And she knows what she has to do next.

Because her father may have told her to lay low, but why lay low when there’s a perfect opportunity to get a strong ally for H.I.V.E. sitting right in front of her.

_What would Felicity Smoak, normal IT girl, do?_

She would join the team.

So that’s what she does.

She transforms herself from babbling IT girl into loyal, morally straight expert hacker in love with Oliver Queen and it works.

Especially the love part. Because really, it’s not a bad view, and pretty much every girl he meets gets a crush on him, so it’s not unexpected, and it gives her this vulnerable side that seems to make the both of them trust her so much more.

But it has a cost.

So maybe she’s lonely, okay. Maybe she buys into Ted Daniels’ bullshit because it’s been years since she’s been on a date and she’s been laying low and thinking it was for the best, but now Oliver has McKenna and Dig has Carly and maybe her pretending to be in love with Oliver Queen has made her feel kind of hollow inside.

But then he’s holding a gun to her head and trying to make her hack something she actually doesn’t want to, and she could take him down then and there, she really could, but it would blow her cover. Luckily, she doesn’t have to.

The Hood bursts through the glass, with a _no means no_ , and she knows she should feel greatful, but all she feels is _tired_. She’s tired of this. Tired of guys taking advantage of her alter-ego’s implicit trust in everyone she meets. Tired of not being able to kick their asses believably. Tired of hiding out in the world and not being loved, not really.

Oliver feels her apartment with flowers.

Okay, so maybe she’s loved. But not like _that_. Not in the way that she’s pretending to be in love with him. He loves her as a friend, a companion, he loves her because she’s down there in the dark with him every night and gives him a warmth that she herself actually lacks. And maybe, just maybe she’ll let herself love him back in that way.

And then she proceeds to give out small things about her to maintain the trust, so it seems like Oliver is the one with all the secrets, when in reality she probably knows much more about his personal life than he’ll ever know about hers.

_I’m Jewish._

_I’ve been building computers since I was seven._

_I dye it, actually._

_I’m not seeing anyone currently._

Little stuff like that. Little things that make them open up about their own stories. Little things that make her wish she hadn’t said them because she finds herself wanting to tell them her own stories. She finds herself actually wanting to be their friends, and that’s a terrifying thought.

Especially when she does not feel a rush of power when Oliver comes to rescue her in the casino, but instead the warmth of camaraderie. Especially when the innuendo that pops out of her mouth when he tells her to hold onto him tightly is only partially forced.

Especially when she refuses to leave the Foundry, even as the Glades are falling to pieces all around her and instead of listening to the self-preservation instinct that’s been instilled in her practically since her birth, she plays out the loyal card.

_If you’re not leaving, I’m not leaving._

And she’s terrified out of her mind as dust falls all around her, but she thinks that this wouldn’t be that bad of a way to go. She wouldn’t mind dying for this crusade.

Of course, there is the matter that her father would probably just bring her back to life using his magical zombie water, but with dying it’s the sentiment that counts, isn’t it?

She survives. The city does not.

 

Oliver leaves her with a million dollars and the city in shambles. Felicity knows she should just take it and be done with it, but this is the first time her life has really felt like it has a purpose in the past few years - ironic, since the entire reason it hasn’t was because she does have a purpose.

And she can’t leave it alone. Can’t leave him alone in the dark wherever he is. So she uses all her resources to find him, including H.I.V.E., and all her money to re-vamp the arrow cave, and, you know, buy some more clothes for herself, because she’s leveled up and out of the IT girl position to something greater, although she’s not quite sure what.

H.I.V.E. finds him on Lian Yu, and she gets the message to Diggle as soon as possible, and they fly out there together.

She jumps out of the plane, ignoring the memory of the first time she ever fell from the ceiling of the H.I.V.E. Vegas Center suspended only by ribbons in favor of letting the panic she’s long learned to control overwhelm her, because Felicity Smoak would react that way.

And then there’s the land mine. The land mine, which she also could disable by herself - probably; it’s been a few years - but which she lets Diggle take care of, until she hears Oliver’s voice and then suddenly she’s flying through the air and he’s on top of her. Shirtless. And sweaty.

She tells herself her pounding heart is from the surprise, even though she knew he was coming before he touched her, because any other explanation does not _cannot_ make sense.

And she gets him back. And it shouldn’t make her as happy as it does.

Isabel Rochev is cocky and powerful and wields said power like a sword. Felicity loves her. Or, would love her, if the other woman didn’t see her as the ditzy blonde IT girl too-close to Oliver Queen.

And then she’s the ditzy blonde Executive Assistant whose closeness to Oliver Queen becomes all too apparent to even the lowest staff member as she gets promoted, and Felicity knows this is not laying low, but she puts up with it anyway, because no one looks at a girl who seemingly slept her way to the top as a threat.

And Felicity wouldn’t mind the rumors that much, if it weren’t for the fact that she’s fairly sure someone within Queen Consolidated works for H.I.V.E. and, while most of the H.I.V.E. workers who meet her don’t recognize her as Damian Darhk’s daughter, if there’s someone within Queen Consolidated, they’re there specifically to keep an eye on her. The Demon’s Head isn’t going to be happy about his daughter sleeping with a billionaire playboy.

So she finds one of them, a guy named Brody Wickham who’s in the Applied Sciences division, and corners him one evening as he’s leaving QC.

His eyes immediately widen as she walks up to him in the parking garage, proving to her that she accurately guessed which of her fellow employees know her secret identity. Still, she makes a bit of a show of it, locking all the doors with her tablet so no one else can enter that level of the garage and they’re alone, and then she extends one small, pale hand.

“Felicity Smoak.”

“Brody Wickham.” He extends his, and shakes hers, and she uses that interaction to find a specific nerve in his arm and dig her nails into it, so his limb slowly paralyses.

“Oh, and I forgot to mention. Daughter of Ra’s al Ghul and Heir to the Demon. Tell my father the promotion was a badly done job at a secret identity, provided by Oliver Queen, who doesn’t want anyone else to know he’s the Arrow. I’m procuring an ally, not sleeping with one.”

Wickham gulps and nods, and then she lets go, his arm falling limp by his side. Suddenly, the Felicity Smoak mask is back and full on as she turns around to shout to him. “It was nice talking to you!”

She unlocks the doors but turns off the lights as she drives out, leaving him alone in the dark and rightly terrified. She hadn’t realized how much she missed being in a position of power. Maybe she’ll keep the EA job afterwards; it seems to have made her co-workers forget that it only takes a few clicks on her part to ruin their lives, and there is power in being underestimated.

 

It works out great, until they’re in Russia. Until she knows that Lyla was taken for reasons that her partners and friends should _not_ get involved in. Until she’s left alone in a car with Isabel Rochev.

“Do you want to know what is a complete mystery to me Felicity?” Isabel asks her, not even looking at her, like she’s not worth her time, staring ahead at the road. Felicity jumps a bit, not expecting the question. Isabel doesn’t even give her time to formulate an answer. “Why he _adores_ you so much. You’re not anything special. Why would he possibly choose _you_ , when he could choose _me_?”

It must be Oliver she’s talking about, and normally Felicity wouldn’t get so defensive, but something about this woman puts her on edge so she responds. “Maybe he knows better than to judge by appearances.”

Isabel just huffs at that and doesn’t ask any more questions. Felicity’s glad of that, but the silence does nothing for all the ice that dangles in the air inside the car. Something about Russia feels not right, and it’s not just the abnormally cold temperatures.

Everything just feels more wrong when she walks into Oliver’s room and Isabel comes out. “I think she can take the night off.” The brunette notes coldly to the both of them as she makes her exit, and Felicity is _fuming_.

She can barely keep the snarky remarks to herself for the rest of the trip, and suddenly the cold is colder, or maybe it no longer bothers her anymore, one of the two, because for some reason there is a fire inside of her, the kindling of which she is sure must’ve started building some time ago. She hasn’t felt like this in so long. Not since Cooper…

And that’s when it hits her. Oliver Queen seems to have wormed his way inside of her heart, despite her best intentions, and the very idea… the idea that Isabel could take something that she loves… the idea that she  can’t do anything about it…

She’s not going to give him the satisfaction of being able to smile and apologize his way out of this one. Nope, not today, because now he’s given her feelings, feelings she was only supposed to pretend to have.

And he’s never been able to lie to her before, so she doesn’t know why she automatically assumes he is when he says “someone I could really care about,” but she does anyway. Because the idea that he could possibly have feelings as well… Well, she’s shutting that down completely.

She brings up her father with him the very next week, the very first real personal detail she’s given him since they started working together, and it’s in the context of a lie: the lie that her father abandoned her, since the proof he very much didn’t is evident in the adrenaline that courses through her veins when she thinks about Diggle’s recent searches for H.I.V.E.. Felicity ignores the very different rush of adrenaline that fills her when Oliver puts his hands on her arms and swears she won’t lose him.

And that is a different lie altogether, because, even if she doesn’t lose him from this or from his battle wounds, she surely will when he finds out the truth, because she can feel everything building to a climax.

Really, he lost her before he even met her. She’s been lost since she was young, ever since she realized claiming power over the things you have is the next best thing to love. And she can’t have love, so that claiming power thing is going to come back soon.

So yes, she’s almost crying because she’s scared of losing him, but not quite for the reasons he thinks.

 

Barry Allen is an unexpected surprise. He’s awkward, charming, smart, and seems to have ruffled more than a few of Oliver’s feathers. He’s exactly the kind of person she needs in her life right now.

Felicity had forgotten what it was like to flirt and talk and fall in love - not that she’s really falling - because she was in love with Oliver before she even realized it. And she looks him up, and yes, his story about his mother may have some details left out, but she’s been there, so forgiveness comes easy, and her passive rage at Oliver also comes easy.

Because Barry Allen is the kind of guy she could see herself dating, and he fits well within her cover, and he’s _perfect._

But then she has to rope him into the Arrow business to save Oliver’s life and all that flies out the window, and she is so angry with herself that she _cannot_ bring herself to just let Oliver die, because she should be that heartless, but she isn’t. Somehow she’s gotten her heart back.

She ignores her heart and focuses in on Barry.

But it turns out Barry also proves she has a heart, because she spends two weeks in some other city for a guy she knew for about three days when he gets struck by lightning. She finds herself caring way more than she should. And really, she shouldn’t care at all.

Yet, she finds herself continuing to care.

 

It’s months later when Felicity sees her opponent to the throne for the first time in years. Nyssa al Ghul shows up to bring Sara back to the League of Assassins, but not before it is revealed to Oliver - and, by extension, Felicity - that the Heir to the Demon has a weakness.

She also seems to have fallen in love beyond her control. And with none other but Sara Lance. Oliver’s old girlfriend. The irony is not lost on her.

So Felicity lays low for the week, even so, it doesn’t take much for the other woman to seek her out. Felicity’s going through the Foundry’s security footage that night when she spots Oliver and Sara reconnecting. Needless to say, she isn’t that tempted to watch more.

Nyssa pops through her bedroom window minutes later.

Felicity throws a few tiny knives that she keeps in her nightstand at the intruder, but Nyssa catches one and blocks the other two.

“What do you want, Nyssa.” She sighs.

“To see you and your father dead and your organization destroyed.”

Her response is the usual one. Felicity almost cracks a smile. “I meant right _now._ ”

“Solace. I assume you already know, your beloved and mine seem to have taken up old habits.”

Felicity leans back in her bed. “I would apologize, but really it’s not my fault.”

She doesn’t ask how Nyssa knew about her feelings for Oliver. They’ve both kept careful eyes on each other for years. She thinks they may know each other better than anyone else.

“The only fault here is ours. We were foolish for believing we could have anything more.”

She turns to Nyssa skeptically. “But you guys were in the League together. Your feelings can’t have been as foolish as mine.”

“My father does not exactly approve.”

“Ahh.”

“What about yours?”

“He hasn’t said anything. Not like it matters, I know he wouldn’t.”

“Well, if you’re not going to offer me something alcoholic I’ll be going then.”

“There’s wine in the cabinet above the sink. Get me a glass and I’ll try not to stab you in your sleep.”

Her only response is a smile.

 

Apparently, Sara is also good at things. Felicity has given her the benefit of the doubt for turning away from the League of Assassins, but at this point she’s getting frustrated. Because she can fight too. She can spar too. She can do everything Sara can do, but she can’t. So instead, she vents out her feelings in sighs and looks and knows Diggle can see them, and then amps up the babble level to 10 when she’s tempted to get out there and spar with them.

“You’re still cute.” Sara says. If only she knew.

She defeats the Clock King, though, and takes a bullet for Sara, and if maybe she lets herself mumble stuff to Oliver about _being his girl_ when she’s pretending to be high on pain meds, because those were definitely _not_ aspirins that Dig gave her, then it’s not her fault, it’s his for making her feel like this.

 

Barry apparently has and Iris. And Oliver has Sara. And Felicity has nothing, except for a coded message from her father telling her to stay safe. Like she wasn’t doing that already.

But then Oliver loses Sara, and Felicity’s right there when it happens, and she’s kind of sad for them; they were good for each other and her and Nyssa were trying their best to move on. Also, she’d been beginning to like the blonde Lance sister.

Oliver tries to give himself up to Slade, who in turn escalates his Mirakuru plans. And then Sebastian Blood comes to her with a message from H.I.V.E.

“Slade was only supposed to kill Oliver, not anyone else. He’s on a rampage. Your father wants you out of the city, you’re too close to him.”

She nods at his message but does nothing about it. If her father wanted her to be ready to pack her life up at any second he should’ve done something about it before she got her heart back.

 

Nyssa shows up in the lair and they go through their introductions, so reminiscent of their first time.

“I am Nyssa, daughter of Ra’s al Ghul, Heir to the Demon.”

Her smirk when Felicity can’t use her full title is evident.

“Felicity Smoak. MIT Class of ‘09.”

She wonders how much Sara and Nyssa have told each other about her.

 

And then Slade takes Laurel.

 

 _I love you_ comes in dim light and an ethereal setting. She knows he must be lying, but he’s never been able to lie to her. The look of surprise is a genuine one, and the cure in her hand is another painful reminder that she’s gotten herself into something she should not have.

Slade is rough with her, and she knows he probably has no clue who she is, despite his connections to H.I.V.E., so she doesn’t fight back. Oliver needs her compliant for this plan to work. Compliant and scared. He has no idea how good she’s gotten at pretending she is.

“He doesn’t see the real danger is right in front of him.” Oliver has no clue how accurate that sentence is. And then her arm moves up, lightning-reflexes finally coming into play, and she stabs him in the neck

It’s later, on the beach of Lian Yu, when she gives him an out, a chance to take it back, a chance to let her heart be rid of it’s aching, he doesn’t take it. At this point, she thinks he might just be determined to kill her.

She calls them unthinkable, because they are, but not for the reasons he might think, and changes subjects by asking about how he learned to fly a plane. Not a good idea, as a not-quite-real smile consumes his face and he doesn’t answer her.

 

“You killed her.” Felicity notes at the assassin afterwards, when it’s just the two of them sitting at the long-closed bar of Verdant, where no one would think to look and no one has been in days.

Nyssa smiles at her a bit, mimicking the one-sided smirk that Isabel used to wear. “I guess I can only stand one daughter of Damian Darhk at a time.” She then has the gall to turn and drag her finger across the tip of one of her blades, nearly drawing blood, instead of explaining.

And Felicity might ask what she means, but she’s already spent time mulling over how Slade could’ve possibly gotten the resources he had, and H.I.V.E. seemed like a valid option. The knowledge that Isabel was another one of his daughters only added to that. A hatred of the real heir made sense. Her constant power trips made sense. Her determined conquest of Oliver -

“Well, I mean, I am your equal, technically.”

Nyssa scoffs. “Only by title.”

“Please. For the record, I can still totally kick your ass.”

“It does not do well to dwell on dreams…” She teases, before Felicity shoots a handful of broken glass at her.

Nyssa blocks it easily. And they begin to fight.


End file.
